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2015 Week Notes 11

I won, via Twitter, a place at a wine tasting at Sam’s Brasserie. Well, I won 2 places but getting people to come out to Chiswick at the last minutes is not always easy! It was a superb evening, with the hosts taking us through a range of pairs of wines, comparing old and new world styles. We tried champagne, 2 red pairs, 2 white pair and a dessert wine pair. (if you’re counting, that’s a lot of wine even in tasting serving!). I had a great evening, sharing a table between a couple of old friends (althogh not convinced their driving to a wine tasting was a good idea, even if most of the wine ended up in the spittoon) and a couple on their first date – I was asked my opinion on the fellow, gave a positive review :-). Fully recommend going to one of these evenings if you get the chance.

There was a quiz at work on Thursday, with a St Patrick’s day theme. My team did not win, but I did get a couple of good points by guessing the thing from the 1st 3 words of a clue – ‘Founded in 1759’. Yes, working for Diageo/Guinness does give you some information

Friday was a disappointment, London was completely overcast and there was no eclipse visble. Instead, just watched the TV feed.

Went out for dinner Friday, another one off my Michelin list. This was the one-star Quilon, an Indian restaurant near Victoria. Liked most of the meal – review to follow.

Reading

only the 2 books read this week (although I may finish another before the end of the day)

Harry Potter and the 12 year Boyhood. Interesting read about the practicalities of filming over a long period of time. Boyhood was a single film produced over the 12 years as the cast aged. The Harry Potter series had the difficulty of filming 8 films with the same cast. There are good questions raised about points when the child stars of the Harry Potter films may have sensibly been replaced but for a variety of reasons, they stuck with the same crew all the way through.

These Urban farmers want to feed the whole neighbourhood. There’s a lot of talk about a sharing economy, but a lot of the companies covered when discussing this are definitely not into sharing, they’re into making profits. so Uber, where anyone can apply to drive, is all about maximising the margins for the company using minimally paid, zero-contract like workers. This initiative is a sharing economy. A piece of land granted by the city, a group of people who work to cultivate the fruit and vegetables and a mission to get people involved.

Training this week was a mixture of cross-training on the bike and just the one run attempted. Leg is still not right, but I’m pushing on with my run-walk training. It’s 3 weeks to go until Paris, 3 weeks to make a decision.